The Secret Chord
by spoonybutts
Summary: And she drew from his lips secrets as he did from hers. Shino/OC, mentions of NaruHina and other


**DISCLAIMER: I do not own Naruto. I only own the OCs. **

Author's Notes: Usually I don't particularly like OC stories. But when you have lonely characters with no canon ships (or destroyed OTPs, like NEJITEN WEEPS) why not give them some loving? Plus this makes me feel happier instead of writing arranged marriage plots when I try to make baby fanfics because fluff with kids is best fluff. There are heavy references back to 'Journey to the West'. As a warning pretty much all my Naruto fanfictions will refer back to JtW. Mostly because I like the idea of linking Princess Mononoke to Naruto in some way. When I wrote JtW I was only in the late 500 chapters of Naruto so I didn't know Neji was DEAD. Naruto's kinda like Homestuck. Everybody is dying! Except some of them are revived in Naruto.

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From the beginning he was ready to settle for less than a smile. His father, Shibi, had been lucky – he had married a woman who liked to keep bees, who could distinguish what was the thorax and what was the head of a bug. Ageha Aburame was a beautiful woman and Shibi loved her and Shibi smiled at her. Shino had met no such woman in his 16 years. Shino, silent and solemn as always, was prepared to hear the words of an arranged marriage leave his father's chapped lips. For someone never in love the news would be mildly disappointing but as long as he had his bugs humming beneath his flesh, he would be fine. If his future bride didn't like his friends she would just have to deal with them. They were his family, their faint barely there chirrups a comfort, and their glittering shells the unknown beauty of the world. They were an Aburame secret, these bugs; a hidden gem beneath their skin and deep in the pulsing of his blood.

The war was over and Shino sat between a blushing Hinata, redder than normal since Naruto had given her a rather exuberant kiss on the cheek, and a slobbering Kiba. Shino would've nitpicked at him but today was a happy day. Sasuke was back, sitting with all of them outside of Ichiraku's trying to eat with a broken arm. There was Sakura, slurping noodles and trying to help Sasuke between bites. There was Ino, feeding Sai in a tree as his sketchbook sat neatly on his lap. There was Lee joining Sakura's side and trying to help his youthful friend Sasuke by feeding him. There was Shizune sitting with the Kages and urging Tsunade not to give Gaara another swig of sake. Shino's bugs skittered forth, basking on his jacket beneath the sun's rays. He clicked his chopsticks together and ate with far more decorum than Kiba. Shino did not pride himself with his manners but at least he kept saliva _inside_ his mouth.

**###**

It was nearly a year before Sai returned. He returned in ragtag clothes and he returned smiling with a sort of honesty that even stunned Shino. When Sai came back to Konoha's warm welcome a bridge had formed. From Iron Town to the Land of Fire, Sai had paved the way. Tsunade welcomed this connection. Iron Town was a land of history, a town of spirits and the Eboshi clan. A town with a very strong economy and good tips and excellent plum wine sent from the Eboshi clan. Shino had not been too fazed by the visit from the Eboshi clan but everyone else was. Tenten, in particular, had been frazzled by the designated leader of the Eboshi clan. Takashi was a man years older than she but he was taken with her. There was elegance to him, the way he carried himself – a man amongst ninjas. He acted like Neji save for his freer smiles. It wasn't long before his visits became frequent and he had an arm around her shoulders.

Some people from the west stayed in Konoha. Some kept visiting, charmed by the clustered buildings and lively ninja and Tsunade was in the midst of developing a special teleportation seal for safety. Sai had explained the forests and the few rogue warriors who roamed the lands. The people of Iron Town had to be kept safe when they went to and from. Shino liked these people well enough and some people, like Naruto, were more than happy to show them neat little tricks. Lee was quite happy to have the Eboshi heads in the village – they fought like no other and they had no chakra to speak of. Even Gai had a problem keeping up with them. Day and night Lee would be seen chattering on and on to one of them or relating his learning experiences to his girlfriend Sakura.

Some people were out of this world, Shino learned. The sun was rising and the grass tickled his knees. There was someone in the flower fields before him, completely unperturbed by the fireflies and the dragon flies floating by. A woman, Shino knew. In the faint light he could make out long hair swept almost all to the left, the dips of her waist, and the curve of her breast silhouetted. The sun was rising higher still and its radiance beamed across dewy grass. The woman had blue hair, her nose faintly upturned and a swipe of violet eye shadow across her lids. A piercing, a silver stud, gleamed against her nose. She raised a hand and a dragonfly fluttered low, resting on long fingers and stilling its wings.

"Aren't they lovely?" she turned to face Shino fully and he could tell she was older, perhaps 20 or 21, "I've never seen dragonflies this big back in Iron Town."

"You actually like bugs?" Shino stepped forward, hesitant, before he settled on the stone beside her. His thigh pressed against hers and he felt warmth from beneath her kimono and her long skirt, "Not many people understand them."

She nodded once, flexing her fingers when the dragonfly flapped its wings and left. A pin glittered in her hair – gold and kingfisher feathers coming together to form a grasshopper on a blooming flower. Shino sat with her in silence, the air filled with the crisp wind and the hum of bugs. His own bugs murmured beneath his skin, curious about this woman and he felt her eyes on him. She would probably leave after this but Shino preferred his lifetime of bugs to a stranger. They crept from beneath his flesh, the smallest ones from under his nails and some from his nose. She did not move away but Shino felt warm breath across his cheek. She had drawn closer and Shino felt his breath hitch in surprise.

"You ninjas are so cool. Maybe I could've learned fancy bug jutsus."

His bugs were reacting. They were practically prancing across her hand, resting light on Shino's shoulder. She smelled like honey and flowers and Shino licked his lips, regretting not wearing a high collar today. This close proximity was not uncomfortable to her but to Shino, 17 years old and hormonal; he felt the all too familiar stirring of his heart and the quickening of his pulse. This woman was older and she knew. Her smile was coy, her lip piercings raising his with her smile.

"I'm Ran Edogawa."

"Shino Aburame."

Ran's eyes, amber, drifted to the moving bugs across his skin and Shino felt a jolt. She wanted to know them, "This is Gen, that's Haru, and this is…"

**###**

It was Ran who asked him out. They were resting on the eaves of someone's house, legs dangling above the crowds. There was some sort of festival today and Kiba teased them, careful not to stand beneath them and right under Ran's skirt. She wore a variation of her usual outfit, a mid thigh kimono now patterned with origami cranes in bold black lines over a flowered knee skirt. Her boots were the same as always, heeled and tipped with beaten metal. They had fallen into a sort of relationship and he had bought dragonfly pins for her. The pearls clattered together when she turned her head to smile at him and Shino managed a brief smile back. Naruto had stopped when he had seen her, staring in a way that was tinged with shock. He asked if she had a sister and had taken it back quickly when Sakura hit him and arrived with Hinata, looking lovely in a new yukata and a flower pinning back her hair.

Her hands were small, warm against his as they ate and sat together. She liked it here in Konoha and they saw each other every day if he didn't have any missions. Ran worked well with the detective agency and she was training under Ino. Shino was proud of her, a sort of honorary genin who wore the mark of Konoha proudly around her waist. The lanterns tinted her hair gold and reflected off the metal of her forehead protector. Sai liked to draw Shino and Ran together and Shino was sure he was sketching somewhere if he wasn't already accosted by Sasuke or Yamato or Kakashi. His fingers wrapped around Ran's loosely as Takashi passed by with Tenten at his side. From behind dark lenses Shino looked at Ran. They had been together back in Iron Town when they were 14 and now they were friends. Ran did not follow a laughing Takashi with her eyes, her head lay on Shino's shoulder and she looked pensive.

"Let's walk," he tugged her away from the crowds, catching a glimpse of Lee twirling Sakura around as she laughed. The brightly colored festival scene gave way to cool Konoha night, the moon illuminating the way through winding buildings and roofs. Ran's boots clicked beside him. She was a beautiful woman, a talented kunoichi who smiled and became a big sister to all of them. Beneath her glittering carapace like visage her secrets were tender and easy to wound. Shino knew how to be gentle with her like he could with insects. Feather soft touches and his murmuring tones, lips skimmed the shell of her ear.

"Naruto's question really got to you. And it's because you actually have a sister, yes?" Shino squeezed her hand gently and watched her lift her head, bright piercings in her ears glittering in shafts of moonlight, "I also assume you are not a real Iron Town native because of your abilities. Nobody in that area has an ounce of chakra in them. Will you tell me?"

"I'm from Ame," Ran said after a moment of silence, "We were attacked during a Ninja War when I was younger. I was cut open and I drifted down the river until a farmer from Iron Town found me. I lost my parents and my sister was forced to run. I taught her origami and I heard rumors of a paper angel. But how was I supposed to know it was really her? I found out too late. Naruto's face told me so. She's dead. Her name was Konan. When I was in Iron Town I forgot a lot of my jutsus and I just became a farmer in the Edogawa family."

He took her shoulders and kissed her with all the experience a then 17 year old could. It was a press of lips, his chapped and hers smooth and slightly parted. It was warm and Shino's mind was buzzing. An urge, this kiss, a sudden desire when he had seen how dark her eyes had become and how her lip had trembled. Her darling little Konan so far and she would never see her. She fed on rumors of an angel with paper wings. Ran's little sister was long gone. Shino drew away, fingers lax at her shoulders. Ran shifted forward, laying her head at the crook of his neck. He held her in the moonlight, arms around her bare shoulders.

He brought her home that night. They slept heart to heart and Ran laughed, breathless, into the air. His fingers had been on her back, tentative, as he traced the scars glinting kunai had gored near the bumps of her spine. Her secrets spilled forward like water breaking a dam and Shino found himself sharing his – the delicate flesh of his secrets beneath the black carapace of his silence, brown eyes bright behind dark lenses. Ran did not like eggplants and she wanted to be the number one detective in the world like some man by the name of Jin Kudo. Ran was born on October 31st and she liked vanilla cake more than anything else. She did not like roses and preferred brightly colored tulips to thorny beauties. Her hair, always seemingly windswept and haphazard to the left, was completely natural and she never touched blue hair dye. Konan, it would seem, had the same hair and so did their buried mother. Her hair was as wild and as cemented to one side as her father's – a happy man with amber eyes and brown hair was that surely gray and filthy now that he was dead.

"What about you? Tell me some things," Ran's lips were on his cheek, the blankets glowing pearly white like her skin in the beams of light through his window. His jacket was zipped loosely over her, and Shino saw a hint of blue lace against her breasts. His hands were at her waist, her thighs splayed on his.

"I like wild grass salad and winter melon. Why? Because they are delicious and even my bugs like them," Shino felt her laughter, rumbling deep in her chest and he joined it with his own, "I hate tofu. I like research. And the reason is simple, because it allows me to find new bugs. With your detective skills we can find bugs like no other has found before."

"There has to be more!" Ran laughed; snake bitten lips against his jaw in open mouthed kisses. Her piercings were another secret. She had heard the paper angel liked them so she had gone and pierced her nose, her lips, and the delicate cartilage of her ears.

"Until now I have expected an arranged marriage. Why? Because I have never been in love before," her hands were on his cheeks and he turned, kissing the fluttering pulse of her wrist, "Here is my last secret. I love you. And my bugs love you, too."

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Author's notes: There is a strong possibility I am horribly biased in my opinion of Konan. She's perfect and wow can I just smooch her. MOVE OVER, YAHIKO. When I hear the name Konan I think of Case Closed! So my OC/Konan's entirely fictional sister is named after Jimmy Kudo/Conan Edogawa's love interest Ran! I kept a bit of the detective theme going with Ran's enjoyment of solving cases and finding things. Also, Shino and Ran did not do KISS KISS BANG. There was a lot of skin to skin cuddling but nothing more. I like couples that can sleep together without screwing and making babies. Ran is 21 and Shino is 17. Hooray for older ladies!

Shino has weird speech quirks from what the Naruto wiki told me so I tried to implement them with Ran and Shino's final conversation. Ran's beginning hair pin is based off Chinese hair accessories with heavy use of precious metals and kingfisher feathers. She layers her clothing a bit like Shino and I based her usual outfit off Leanne from Resonance of Fate. (It's a good game, a bit tedious but I highly recommend it! VASHYRON/LEANNE PREASE). Ran will be featured again in future works as well as Takashi and Tenten but for the purpose of, you guessed it, baby stories. And angry teenage daughters and sons because that's pretty neat.


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